Yes. I've often stewed about something. Why, after all the years AMD and Nvidia, or AMD and Intel have been designing silicon, has not one of the companies ran away with performance? You'd think that over a period of a few decades, one company would vastly overshadow another, not ALWAYS be ridiculously neck and neck especially when AMD for example has next to no funds. They can STILL offer a Titan competitor, when Nvidia has relatively unlimited funds to utterly wipe the floor with AMD. Same with Intel. AMD does not offer a faster CPU than Intels fastest, BUT is STILL able to keep up a few tiers lower with next to no money for R&D and such. When I say next to no money, I'm talking in relative terms compared to Intel or Nvidia.
Seems quite impossible to me and the only explanation that I can wrap my mind around is that they actually are all working together, despite public appearances.
Something isn't right. Hasn't been for many many many years. Only in the last few have I suspected anything like collusion between these companies.
I'm sick (Not really. Just sick of it) over the whole industry. My views have changed pretty radically over the last few years. Anyone ever get this feeling when they see year after year, gen after gen, that one company does not continually walk away from the other? Does not make sense. Even two turtles racing over a 100 mile distance will cross a given finish line at completely different times. Could be a week apart, could be a month, or a year. Best analogy I can come up with on a half a cup of coffee.
Good morning to all, and have a great day!
Yeah like I posted earlier in this thread, they slowplay each other in sake of profit.
Nvidia could have unleashed the GK110 from the getgo and be done with it. But instead built a smaller GK104, and release bigger and bigger, step by step, while marketing them like something revolutionary to fire up people to buy the "new" GPUs. I say "new" because I`m pretty sure they have made many ES of several Nvidia GPUs a long time ago, where atleast one design was good enough to be made QS. But instead they wait to see any of the two make a move, then release their QS that was made a long time ago.
Both Nvidia and AMD don`t want to outplay each other, because that lead to an arms race which benefit customers more than the companies. Imagine a beast like GK110/290X from the beginning, mastering all of the games without a hitch. How would they market the new GPUs? Both companies like to use games as examples to get people to buy GPUs.
"This new GPU can play Battlefield 4 in 1600p maxed out"
"Yeah I`ll pass, my GK110/R9 290X released 2 years ago can do that too".
Throw in Mantle and OpenGL optimizations which they pushed out several years ago, that meant that the GPUs is much better utilized with much better performance/hardware (like they do with consoles to squeeze the most out of the hardware), you kinda understand why neither AMD nor Nvidia have bothered making an effort making a better API. Who knows, customers might had only needed a smaller cheaper GPU to play todays games that need a big power sucking GPU that doesnt really perform its best due to inefficient DX API.
I`m not entirely sure how much they pay for silicon from TSMC, although I understand that a GK110 551mm^2 cost more than GK104 295mm^2, a GPU consist of many parts. The silicon itself is just a fraction of the total cost, parts like fan, PCB, vapour chamber, casing etc also cost money. So I have trouble believing that the silicon itself means that the total price have to double (GK104 = $500, GK110 = $1000).